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- [00:01]
Podcast Host or Announcer
Are you looking for a meaningful Valentine's Day gift? Give the gift of time with your spouse by committing to working together through my new book, that We Might have Joy. Starting on February 19, I'm going to be offering a book club. When you join the book club, you'll meet with me each week for a deep dive into the concepts that are taught in that We Might have Joy. And I'll use your questions that you submit to guide immersive discussions, helping you to see more clearly how the teachings in the book can apply to you and your relationship. The cost is $59 per household and is essentially five dates. Whether you've already read the book or have been meaning to get around to it, this is a wonderful opportunity to engage with the material in a whole new way together. So join us and experience how the insights of that We Might have Joy can reshape the way you see yourself and your relationships. Faith and Joy. You can order your copy and learn more about the book club by clicking on the link in the show notes.
- [01:15]
Aubrey Chavez
Hey, everybody, this is Aubrey Chavez from Faith Matters. As we explore the Old Testament this year, we found ourselves returning to a past conversation with our friend Teryl Givens. It felt grounding and expansive, and so we're really excited to share it with you again today. The Old Testament can be so incredibly rich, full of beauty and poetry and profound spiritual insights. But it can also sometimes feel bewildering or even faith shaking. We get glimpses of this loving and nurturing God and then turn the page to encounter God that seems angry and even violent. It's a text that raises big questions and invites us into deep wrestles, and maybe that's part of its sacredness, that it pushes us into such honest and meaningful conversation. In this episode, Terrell helps us navigate some of those tensions together. We ask, what is the Bible really? And where did it come from?
- [02:02]
Podcast Co-host or Guest
What.
- [02:03]
Aubrey Chavez
What do different translations of this text have to offer? And how can we engage with this scripture in a posture of both reverence and discernment that allows for the mystery and honors the sacredness of the whole landscape? We love Taryl's insights in this conversation, and we're so grateful to revisit them now. Thanks so much for listening, and we hope that you enjoyed this episode as much as we did. All right, well, Terrell, welcome back. We're always excited to have you.
- [02:24]
Terrell Givens
Thanks. Good to be here.
- [02:27]
Aubrey Chavez
We're excited to talk about the Old Testament today. Um, this is, I think, probably arguably, arguably the most difficult text that we study as a as you know, with our church congregation. So we're hoping that you can kind of establish some basics for us today. Like we're going to talk about some context, how the Bible was compiled and by whom and how to most effectively engage the text.
- [02:49]
Terrell Givens
Sure. Just with a caveat that I'm not an Old Testament scholar, that you're our favorite scholar. Let's get that straight.
- [02:57]
Aubrey Chavez
So I, we were curious if, you know, as you consider this year, in all 30,000, thousand plus congregations of our church studying the Old Testament together, is there anything about this that worries you?
- [03:06]
Terrell Givens
Yeah, it keeps me awake.
- [03:09]
Podcast Co-host or Guest
And also note, you are a, you are a Sunday school teacher.
- [03:12]
Terrell Givens
I am a Sunday school teacher, yeah. A lot of the enterprise of studying the Old Testament as a lay church without a professional clergy or trained scholars concerns me because the, the Old Testament is deeply problematic in a number of ways, or maybe I should say our culture has made it problematic unknowingly. You know, it strikes me that if a, if a visitor were to step into a typical gospel doctrine class studying the Old Testament, he would come away thinking, oh, these people subscribe to the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy. They're all fundamentalists. Because there is this drive in our scripture culture to make everything consistent, to make everything seamless, to make everything speak with one voice. Yeah. And you just can't even begin to do that while respecting the nature of the Old Testament and its history and composition. And so that's the first, I think, red flag that comes up in my mind. I think there's much of benefit, much value in the Old Testament. But we have to start with, I think, a recognition that it's not, I mean, even the Book of Mormon isn't one book. Right. You have a couple of voices that dominate, right. Mormon's editorial work and Nephi's small plates. And so there's a kind of consistency to the tone and vision of those two voices. And it makes sense to think of them as editors, authors, but we know virtually nothing about the authorship of the Old Testament. It is a compilation that arose over time in phases, but in no systematic, organized way that we have record of. There weren't councils that deliberated and then said, well, this is canonical and this isn't. There isn't one presiding editor. And so for a long time now, going all the way back to German scholarship of the 19th century and even beyond, right. There's been a general recognition that there are, there are many authors, many traditions feeding into even the first five books, Right. The Pentateuch or the. Or The Torah. And so even today, right. There are various schools of criticism, contending hypotheses as to how many traditions there are. Right. Many scholars still talk about the documentary hypothesis, right, The J, E, P and D, that we have one tradition that uses Yahweh for God, one tradition that uses Elohim. So those are the J and E. There's a priestly tradition and there's a Deuteronomic tradition. So the P and D today, they're more likely to talk about the priestly tradition and non priestly traditions. So all of that stuff is very complicated in the subject of controversy. But the point is that we can see even in the text that has come down to us, right. Inconsistent voices.
- [06:13]
Aubrey Chavez
Right.
- [06:14]
Terrell Givens
Even within the space of a few verses. And so we have to stop, desist from this effort to try to make everything kind of cohere in a simple, straightforward way.
- [06:25]
Podcast Co-host or Guest
Yeah. And what, what do you say to the listener who says, well, we believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly. And so like the. Potentially we only have that one out, right, which is there. If, if something's wrong, it must be a translation problem, otherwise I'm all in. Which is not too far from inerrancy.
- [06:41]
Terrell Givens
Yeah, yeah, that's true. First of all, I point out a number of things about the articles of faith. First of all, they were written for non Mormon audience. Right? Right. And so it's clear that part of what Joseph Smith is doing with these articles of faith is trying to allay the concerns of a suspicious, uneasy public that we are in fact orthodox in most of the essential ways. Right. I mean, think about article of faith 1. We believe in God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost. We're not going to tell you that we think they're embodied, right? Yeah, but we're good. So it makes it sound like we're trinitarians. Yeah, for heaven's sake. And so as an evangelizing faith, we want to have common ground with those that we're teaching and talking to. And so sharing the Bible is an important step in that direction. But you need to counterbalance, right. That article of faith with the many statements made in the Book of Mormon and by Joseph Smith where he talks both about those, the loss of plain and precious things, and then he also uses the word, the interpolations of men. And so Joseph Smith made it abundantly clear that he was not part of this liberal Protestant tradition that was, excuse me, of the evangelical tradition that was working toward a model of inerrancy quite the contrary. Much of his work, as he understood it, was to repair the damage. Right. He retranslated the Bible and it's as if there was just too much damage. And so he, he gives us the book of Moses as a kind of an addendum, but also kind of corrective to many of the incorrect definitions, descriptions of God and his interactions that take place in the Bible. So it's also the case that in very recent years, both Elder Oaks and Elder Holland have used almost identical language to say we do not believe the Scriptures are the source of ultimate truth. They both use that exact language. Right. They say the Spirit is the source and the Scriptures are an imperfect kind of. Right. Reflection that filth is filtered through culture and history and individual fallible minds over and over, over and over and over again. Yeah, absolutely. And so I think the, the important thing is to approach the Old Testament with respect and with deference and with a kind of intellectual humility that we don't have all the answers and we can't all make all the pieces fit together perfectly.
- [09:10]
Aubrey Chavez
And I, I totally recognize that we cannot become biblical scholars, you know, in an hour, but I think it is really helpful to understand a little bit more about what you mentioned about documentary hypothesis, because if you're really, you know, holding on to, trying to make everything feel cohesive and, you know, looking for meaning in every verse, it can be almost instantly problematic. So. And I feel like there's low hanging fruit, like there's low hanging fruit where you, you could actually open up your own Bible and recognize a few different voices. So could you kind of just introduce us for someone who has never heard of the documentary hypothesis?
- [09:41]
Terrell Givens
This.
- [09:41]
Aubrey Chavez
What do you mean? What do you, what are you talking about? The J and the P?
- [09:45]
Terrell Givens
Right. Well, there is a school of Jewish thought, Hebrew thought, in which Elohim is generally used as the name of God, but sometimes the name Yahweh is used. And so that is generally attributed to a different strand of thinking.
- [10:02]
Aubrey Chavez
Like some people say Yahweh, some people say Elohim.
- [10:04]
Terrell Givens
Exactly.
- [10:05]
Aubrey Chavez
And that's like your tell, that's how you know who's talking.
- [10:06]
Terrell Givens
Exactly. So both terms make it into the text of the Old Testament. There's another tradition that is, is extremely preoccupied with the law, with legalism, and, and with the book of Deuteronomy. And so those are called the Deuteronomists. And then there is another tradition that is generally called the priestly tradition that is particularly oriented around priestly observances and rituals and rites. And. And so forth. And so sometimes, like, there's a moment in. In Ex where Moses goes up to the mount to receive the plates. And one can actually see, you could just read it today and you can see that there are three different versions that are kind of indiscriminately mingled because one moment Moses going up with Joshua, the next moment he's going up with 70 elders, and the third moment he's going up by himself. And there are three different occasions in which the text says, and then, then Moses went up into the mount. So it's as if. And this is how I really like the scholar John Barton has written a wonderful. The Bible. And he says it seems clear from the kind of patchwork nature of these narratives that the compiler wasn't trying to make a store a seamless story like a novel. He was compiling an archive. And I think that's a magnificent image to have in mind, that it's like this repository of numerous accounts, versions, traditions, stories. And the editor isn't taken upon himself to reduce it to one coherent narrative, but it's. It's there as a, Like a library of, of stories and myths and legends and, and prophecies and so forth.
- [11:50]
Podcast Co-host or Guest
So tradition has it that. That Moses was the author of. Of the Torah, essentially. Right. The first, the first five books of the Old Testament is. Has that been successfully refuted at this point?
- [12:00]
Terrell Givens
Well, it certainly is the consensus among biblical scholars that that's erroneous in the same way that very few classical scholars think there was a Homer who wrote the Odyssey. Homer is more the name of a kind of the culmination of various oral traditions that took a certain form in the 8th century. You know, the problem with Moses as author has been recognized ever since. We find in those first five books an account of Moses own death. So that's peculiar. You could narrate your own death. So I don't. I don't. You know, I. One principle, in fact, when I was teaching Gospel doctrine to start this year, the first thing before we opened the Old Testament as I is I. I wrote on the board as a statement. It's attributed to John Wesley, but it was pretty much just a Reformation principle. And he said, I wish the Christian world unity in essentials, liberty in things indifferent and charity in all things. And I think that should be kind of a mantra for our study of the Old Testament, is that I think our problem is over belief more than under belief. We think we know more than we do. And so we back ourselves into corners all the time by taking as dogma, what is really just speculation or trying to fill in some of the gaps in our understanding of the gospel. And so if we could just hold more things in kind of a, kind of right, neutral abeyance while we wait for either revelation or scholarship to fill in some of these blanks.
- [13:33]
Podcast Co-host or Guest
Yeah, let me, let me lay out a potential series of dominoes falling for a more traditional, traditional or literalistic believer who's hearing this and saying, well, if Moses didn't, if Moses didn't write the, the Torah essentially, then we don't know who wrote it, may not have been a prophet. And if, you know, a prophet by the traditional, you know, Latter Day Saint understanding, and if that's not the case, then where did the story of Adam and Eve come from? Is it literal? And if it's not literal, then what do I even know about the creation of the world or, you know, the purpose of, you know, what does that mean about the fall, which, what does that mean about the atonement? So how do you, how do you deal?
- [14:16]
Terrell Givens
Well, I think, I think you're asking a question and, and there's. The answer is, well, there isn't any simple rule or metric or standard that we can appeal to there. There just isn't. And that's why I think in our restoration tradition, especially what's Emphas again and again and again, is the personal, confirm, confirmatory experience of the Spirit. We have to be our own interpreters when the brethren have not authoritatively spoken on these matters. And as a rule, they don't speak a lot on matters of scriptural interpretation. So I, I think there, again, the question is what, what are the questions that matter most? And, you know, I remember asking Richard Bushman once, we were having a conversation about the flood, and I said, you know, what are your feelings about a God who would destroy the entire planet in a flood? He said, well, I don't think the question is whether that particular story is true in its details. I think, I think the more important question is what's the lesson we're supposed to learn from that. So I think it's also important to recognize that revelation and inspiration take place on sliding scales. And I think the church itself has acknowledged that in very public ways in recent years especially, I mean, if you think about the Joseph Smith Papers project and the publication of the facsimile edition of the Book of Revelation of Revelations. And what do we have there? We have a holograph of, right. The recorded revelations in the scribe's hand on one page and on the other page we have a transcript with seven different colors of ink capturing seven different editorial intrusions that Joseph Smith asked his colleagues to contribute. And so obviously Joseph didn't think that in these cases, revelation was just kind of stenography of a divine voice. It was an attempt to grapple with intimations and heavenly inspiration. And so I think different prophets have different agendas and preoccupations and have different cultural frameworks. And so I think we get varying degrees of inspiration in the Scriptures, some that are more relevant and I think more. More pure as they came from the mind of God. And we should expect that. And I think we need to remember that in the New Testament, which has a much less complicated history, even there, we find discordance right between the apostles, and we find discordant voices seeming discordant, seemingly discordant between James and Paul, right? To which Luther's response was, well, let's just throw out the book of James and so just recognize that these flaws and imperfections are part of it. In fact. In fact, can I read something that I brought? Because I thought it would be particularly useful. Many of us have heard the phrasing from a letter Joseph Smith wrote to W.W. phelps about the frustration of working within the limits of language. But I've never heard the entirety quoted, and the entirety bears repeating because he, he. He complains about, quote, the little narrow prison, almost, as it were, total darkness of paper, pen and ink and a crooked, broken, scattered and imperfect language. So this is, this is a prophet, right, saying, I am continually constrained by the limitations of language and trying to. Trying to get this into, you know, concise, accurate grammar and diction. But this is the rest of the quotation that I think is so powerful. He anticipated a future day when God would, quote, hold up the dark curtain so that we might read the round of eternity to the fullness and satisfaction of our immortal souls. So you get what? He's right. This is the prophet in his capacity as prophet and seer and revelator, saying, I don't have the full picture. I'm struggling with an imperfect language. So we've got to, I think, reshape our expectations of prophetic discourse.
- [18:19]
Podcast Co-host or Guest
And is it, Is it possible that this, this interpretation that's, you know, by, you know, by the spirit that is required of us can't or shouldn't at least happen in isolation? That it's. I think Peter N. Says that the, the. The Bible should open onto a wisdom conversation.
- [18:37]
Terrell Givens
Well, yeah, I'm glad you asked that question. I'm Glad you asked it that way because I expected one of the questions today might be, well, then, what is the value?
- [18:45]
Aubrey Chavez
Yes, well, that was the question I just wrote down, like, why is it a holy book?
- [18:49]
Terrell Givens
And, and so let me just say a few words about what it means to be part of a canon. Right. One of the functions of a canon is to provide a basis for common conversation and community.
- [19:03]
Podcast Co-host or Guest
Love that.
- [19:04]
Terrell Givens
And so that in and of itself is a hugely important function. We have this book of inspired discourse, and it creates the basis for our interactions and our struggles to understand ethics and morality and the divine will. What? You know, it'd be kind of a useless anarchy if everybody brought Sunday school class their own favorite text, just all engaged in a free flow.
- [19:29]
Aubrey Chavez
That would be fun sometimes.
- [19:31]
Terrell Givens
So I also, I also love the analogy that has been used by a Jewish writer on the scriptures. He said, he compares it to the Temple Mount and he says, look, we know somewhere on that Temple Mount was, was the actual temple, but we don't know exactly where. And so we take off our shoes and treat the whole mount with reverence. And, and that's at least how I try to approach the Scriptures. I know that, that God's fingerprints are there. I know not everywhere. Right. Brigham Young said some parts were written by man, some by angels, and some by the devil. That's not a quote you're probably going to hear.
- [20:07]
Aubrey Chavez
That's another mantra that would be useful.
- [20:10]
Terrell Givens
But if we treat the entirety of the canon as this holy relic that has its flaws and cracks, then I think that's the proper attitude with which to approach scripture.
- [20:22]
Aubrey Chavez
I like that. And then even when you are running into something that is causing a lot of dissonance, that in itself can be a holy activity. You know, recognizing I, this is not the God that I believe in.
- [20:31]
Terrell Givens
Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. It reminds me of Nikolai Berdaev, who's my current favorite inspired prophetic voice. And, and he says in one of his books, he was a great Russian theologian, wrote in the early 20th century, and he said sometimes the most moral activity you can engage in is atheism.
- [20:50]
Aubrey Chavez
Wow.
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Terrell Givens
And what he meant by that was, it depends on what your options are.
- [20:54]
Aubrey Chavez
Right.
- [20:54]
Terrell Givens
And what kind of God is available to you through your culture. And sometimes rebellion and discontent is the most godly response we can have to a troubling episode. I think. I think we need to imitate the Jewish mindset more in their willingness to treat God as a grown up. And what I mean by that is we tend to. We tend to be so afraid of disappointing or challenging or. And, you know, there's a Jewish saying that whenever a rabbi wins an argument with God, God dances. And so, you know, I think he can take it if we push back and we question and we interrogate in ways that reflect the pain of our souls and the agony of our search.
- [21:40]
Aubrey Chavez
Wow, that's such a great point. Before we move on from just the, like, the structure of the Old Testament, can we just finish kind of walking through the rest of the book? So we have, we talked about the Torah after that. Do we know anything about how those books were compiled?
- [21:55]
Terrell Givens
We don't. The, the, the Hebrew Scriptures, right, Which is the Jewish name for what we call the Old Testament, is divided into three fundamental parts, right? The Torah, the way, the teachings or the law, first five books of Moses, and then you have the Neviim, which means the writings of the prophets, and then you have the Ketuvim, which is a kind of miscellaneous other writings. And so there's a recognition right there that there are radically distinct genre. And, you know, if I Learned anything from 30 years in the, in the literary profession, it's that rules of interpretation shift from genre to genre. Patterns of meaning change and shift, authorial stance and perspectives change. And so you don't read a Psalm the same way you read the Chronicles or Leviticus, right? Yeah. And so Latter Day Saints especially seem reluctant to appreciate what it means to talk about writings as a group of stories. In many cases, like Jonah's a story and Job is a story and, and Esther's story, and, you know, heaven help us if we think that Job's opening scenes are an accurate eyewitness account of God and Satan gambling over human destinies in this frivolous way. So the book of Job especially is clearly written as a kind of drama, right, where it's tightly structured in scenes and acts and highly stylized in its speech. And so instead of wasting time asking silly questions about, you know, how historically accurate are these details, can we just get to the moral of the story that is being narrated? We have psalms, which even within the book of Psalms, we have multiple genre, right? We have psalms of protest and psalms of lament and psalms of supplication and psalms of celebration and praise. And many times, right, the Psalms do no more than give expression to anger and frustration and hatred against enemies and, and conditions. And so it isn't the case that we should read the Bible as literature, but we should read it with, with sympathy and respect for the literariness of the prophecies and the psalms and the and, and the stories that are there.
- [24:26]
Podcast Co-host or Guest
So as we move through the year, then let's say somebody's really wanting to. Wanting to do that and read it with those, those things in mind, but they don't know necessarily where to go to understand what, which genre they're reading and maybe what those, what those best practices are for read for reading and interpretation of that genre. Do you have rules of thumb or, you know, where could, where could someone go to, to learn?
- [24:48]
Terrell Givens
I don't, you know, there isn't any one source. I mean, there are many, many good, reliable sources and reference works. I think for Old Testament studies or biblical studies in general. You know, for the New Testament, I like Raymond Brown's Introduction to the New Testament. For the Old Testament, like I said, I like the History of the Bible by John Barton. My favorite and most utilized reference is probably the Interpreter's Bible, which is, I don't know, 12 or 15 volumes. And it's magnificent because it gives two different translations of every passage. It gives background, it gives cultural context, and it gives interpretive commentary. And so, you know, I think, I think in, in my view, the most important talk given in the last 50 years by an apostle was Elder Ballard's 2016 talk to the CES educators around the world. And among other things, he said, we have failed to prepare our young people for the challenges of the real world. And he's talking about courses of instruction. He also said that if you don't know something, if you're having questions about a, an important point or issue, he said, go to the scholars, go to the experts. So it was really the first time in my lifetime, right, that the brethren have said, look, we need to broaden our perspective and our purview, and we need to, to, to appreciate and avail ourselves of the best scholarship that exists. And for too long we've had this kind of boogeyman of the apostasy there in the background, and that we're the only ones that have access to truth. Truth. And so I think we need to avail ourselves of really good scholarship on both the Old and New Testaments. So that's something we can do.
- [26:31]
Aubrey Chavez
I'm curious. I mean, looking for the moral of a story feels pretty intuitive when, when a story is complicated and you don't want to believe that God and Satan were gambling. You know, I think that's generally what people do is like, okay, well, what can we learn from the story? But what is there to learn from the law? Like, those books, I feel like, feel really out of reach.
- [26:49]
Terrell Givens
Yeah, well, okay, let me give, let me give a concrete example, right? I had a close friend back at Richmond who was an observant Jew. And so he didn't eat hamburger cheeseburgers, okay? And if they can afford it, observant Jews will even have two separate kitchens, one for dairy and one for meat. Okay, why is that? Well, it's because, you know, a non Jewish person looks at that and says, well, that's a bit extreme and that's a bit pharisaical. But if you understand that, what's, what's it at the root of that there is a, a prohibition given in the Old Testament that thou shalt not see the kid and its mother's milk. Okay. Now, I don't know why I can imagine there's just something grotesque, right, about boiling a young child in the, in the mother's milk. But for whatever reason, the Jewish attitude to that is, I have such a love for God and for his law that I'm going to make sure I can't even by accident do that. So I will keep the kitchens separate so that I never mingle those two things. So I think if you understand the law, as the Jewish mindset does, as an expression of God's love, and you want to revere and reverence it, I think reading something like the book of Leviticus, that might be deadly dull and seemed so absolutely irrelevant to us, but it tells us something about the attentiveness to detail, the desire to comply with God's commands in the least particular. And I think that's something that we should be able to read and appreciate and, and learn something about the, the love of law. I, you know, there was a, a prophet, I think, was it President Benson, who said, the true disciple makes obedience a quest? I've always loved that, because what he meant is if you love God and understand the reason for the law, then you're not looking for reasons to escape it, you're looking for reasons to comply. Yeah. And so I think that's one, one way of thinking about the value of those books.
- [28:57]
Aubrey Chavez
That's great.
- [28:58]
Terrell Givens
Yeah.
- [28:58]
Podcast Co-host or Guest
Can we, can we do one other example genre? If we were to talk about the book of Ecclesiastes, for example, all is vanity. You know, I, I read this recently and felt like I'm depressed, you know, and I think potentially the author of the book is depressed. You know, there may be, there may be a mental health issue going on here. I, I, what, what, how do, what do you get out of that? Or how, what might be the conversation to be had around a book like that.
- [29:23]
Terrell Givens
I think if one puts it in the context, Right. Of the larger assemblage of books that constitute the Bible. It's. It's as if we are having. We're being validated in moments of despair and crisis. We're being told that even a godly people striving to keep the covenant have occasions when they are completely incapable of seeing the light behind the darkness. And so I think that the book of the. That the Bible is in many ways a record. Right. If there is any thematic unity to it. Right. It would be the record of a people striving to live up to the promises that God has made to them. And so we see their successes, but we also see their failures, and we see their moments of despair as well as their moments of jubilation. And so I think we should be no more disconcerted by the bleakness of Ecclesiastes than we are by, you know, Psalm 137. Right. Which is by the waters of Babylon we wept and we wanted to write dash the brains of the little children against the why. That's horrible, horrific. But it, it, it. How else can we empathize with the trauma of a people who feel their God has abandoned them after centuries of being people of the covenant?
- [30:40]
Aubrey Chavez
Yeah, so. And just an extension, when it comes to the even more horrific stories, the genocides, do you even wrestle with it? Do you just say, that's just not my God? Like, what. You know, how comfortable are you just moving on? Like, I. I'm uncomfortable finding meaning in it. I'm uncomfortable every time it comes up in a Sunday school class and we all try to, like, make it beautiful. Like, it just.
- [31:01]
Terrell Givens
This is.
- [31:01]
Aubrey Chavez
It's just not the God I know. Like, I just want to throw it away.
- [31:05]
Terrell Givens
Yeah. There's some pretty prominent voices in the Mormon academic community today who are writing and have written recently on the subject of the violence of God in third Nephi 9, for example, they've come up with some pretty interesting justifications and rationalizations. I respect them all. I and Fiona, however, think that Moses 7 was given by direct revelation in our day in the context of trying to correct the damage done to the plain and precious truths. And so it has a higher place in our kind of canon of inspired writ. And so for us, the. The God who weeps with us and sorrows with us is the standard by which we evaluate what we think are some less than inspired depictions in scriptures. And I think a lot of times what you get in scripture is writers trying to justify themselves by invoking God's name and authority. And sometimes I think that's sincere. They. They really believe they are instruments of God's will. And other times I think it's bald rationalization. But, yeah, I, I think we. We have to come to terms in a way that we feel consistent with the spirit as he, she is communicating with us. I. I'm mindful especially of remarks that Elder Holland made just this past week at byu where he said God never inflicts destruction on an individual or anything. He used that word really doesn't inflict. Now, he wasn't talking about 1359. So I'm not, I'm. I'm not. I don't want to be taken to misquote or misuse him here. Yeah, he's talking about the lives of individuals.
- [33:05]
Aubrey Chavez
Yeah.
- [33:06]
Terrell Givens
But even that, it seems to me, is a really striking pronouncement to make that God does not inflict pain on you. He does not inflict travail. That stuff happens.
- [33:16]
Aubrey Chavez
Yeah.
- [33:17]
Terrell Givens
That's part of the composition of this planet. And so I tend to think that, yeah, God would not personally massacre the firstborn of every Egyptian mother. Yeah. In the court of Pharaoh, that he would not glory in burying men, women, and children alive. But that one could justifiably attribute to God those things if one has a particular narrative.
- [33:41]
Podcast Co-host or Guest
Well, okay, this is. I'm just going to run with this tangent for a second because this question has come up on the podcast before, but not with you. So 359 has the distinction of being written in God's voice. Right. So every other, Every other instance of genocide is a human voice.
- [33:55]
Terrell Givens
That's right.
- [33:56]
Podcast Co-host or Guest
Speaking about what happened and, you know, potentially their interpretation. So in that special case, how do you, how do you deal with it?
- [34:04]
Terrell Givens
Well, once again, it may be written in the first person, but the words are being written down by a prophet who conceives himself as hearing those words. And he may indeed have heard them, but it may also be the case that that was his spiritual intimation and that was his interpretation of what he was feeling and seeing and witnessing. And so I try to be open to those possibilities. Our perspective is limited. It may be that in the eternities, God says, well, their suffering was brief, but now they're back with me. Death isn't the horror that you think it is. So I'm. I'm open to those possibilities. Like, I continue to wrestle.
- [34:39]
Aubrey Chavez
I mean, and I love that it just. That reaffirms this idea that these are living books. You know, there's something really beautiful about the fact that we feel troubled and have to pause and really consider what we believe about God. And like, isn't that, wouldn't that be better for my own growth than a perfect book about, you know, beautiful stories of God answering prayers? Yeah. Can we talk about different translations? Was it this last conference, I think that Elder Uchtdorf quoted from the New International Version, wasn't it? Elder Uchtdorf, are you remembering this, Terrell? Someone quoted not from the kjv and I was so excited because I like, I, I, I use the NIV a lot. Just, you know, it feels like a, like sometimes I'll read through the NIV version quickly and then I'll go to kjv and it's beautiful and more poetic and I feel like I absorb a little more because I got the gist of the gist of it from something very simple. So. But before we go into translations, do you, can you talk about just how we came to hold such reverence for the King James Version?
- [35:34]
Terrell Givens
Yeah, I think the explanation is pretty simple. I think the fact that it was the by far the dominant translation in Joseph Smith's day. Okay. It was the one that all of the founders and apostles and prophets and members were familiar with. And to clinch the deal, the Book of Mormon gets translated into King James English and cites verbatim King Jamesian language and passages. And so that kind of locked us into that. There would be a kind of weirdness and disconnect if we're looking at Third Nephi and reading the Sermon on the Mount and then we cross reference it and wait a minute now the language is different, right?
- [36:14]
Aubrey Chavez
Really different.
- [36:15]
Terrell Givens
So I think think that's it. But I think there is a widespread sense that we need to be open to enhancing our understanding of the Scriptures by availing ourselves of other translations. We all know that the nrsv, for example, is more accurate than the King James.
- [36:34]
Aubrey Chavez
So can we go through a few other others that you appreciate or use?
- [36:39]
Terrell Givens
Okay. My favorite translation is by Kevin Wuss and it's called the Expanded Translation of the New Testament or the Expanded New Testament. So he only did the New Testament. Okay, but let me give you an example of how different the the ending of Matthew 5 is. Right. We all know by heart, right. Therefore, be perfect. Yeah, this is how he translates that. Therefore, as for you, you shall be those who are complete in your character, even as your Father in heaven is complete in his being. So sometimes it's just a matter of tone, but in this case he's actually Interpreting the grammar very differently. In the original Greek, there is an imperative. Excuse me, excuse me. There's a future indicative. You will be perfect rather than the imperative. Rather than the imperative. Now, it can in some circumstances be interpreted legitimately as an imperative, but there are a number of Bible translators who say, well, no, the clear sense of it here is just a future. And, and it gives a completely different meaning. In this rendering. What Christ is saying is, okay, I'm. I'm giving you all of these directives and challenges and promises, but let me just finish by saying, it's going to be okay. You're all going to be whole. And so to me, it's one of the most beautiful moments of comfort and assurance to his disciples rather than this imperative that gets debated for the next centuries in Christian theology. Can we be perfect? Would he give us. Right, right. And so that's. That's probably one of my very, very favorites.
- [38:18]
Podcast Co-host or Guest
That's really beautiful. Especially because that verse, the KGB version of that verse, can be so anxiety inducing.
- [38:23]
Terrell Givens
Yeah, yeah. Just because nobody reads that and goes, oh, yeah, yeah, get right to it.
- [38:28]
Aubrey Chavez
That's so inspiring.
- [38:30]
Terrell Givens
Yeah, okay, that's a great example. Then there's just kind of really simple instances of key shifts in translation. David Bentley Hart as a whole, I'm not a great fan of his translation, but let me just say a few things about translation theory. There's really no theory of translation as a science until almost Joseph Smith's day. And then we get from the Germans, like Schleiermacher, they start thinking about, well, what are the. What are kind of the philosophical and theological problems involved in translating from one language to another? Because there's a recognition that there is no such thing as a perfect, transparent rendering from one language into another. So Schleiermacher says there are two ways we can approach translation. We can either move the writer into the world of the reader. So a good example of that would be like the blue jeans translation. Right, Right. We're going to just translate in a hip jargon. And the other is you move the reader into the world of the writer. And it seems to me that's what David Bentley Hart is trying to do. So he's, he's, he's been much more literal in his translation. He uses phrasing that at times is jarring and unsettling or even indecipherable because he wants us to experience the weirdness of the New Testament, which is radically undermining and overturning. Right. All established understandings of morality and Religion. And he thinks we just water it all down with a sweet, nice King James in English. And so there's also a few key changes he makes. Like, you know, we know in Greek metanoe, which we translate as repent. But this is how he translates it. In Mark 1:4, for example, King James has that John is baptized with a baptism of repentance. And Hart says he is baptized and with the baptism of the heart's transformation. Now that's one change. But it's. Right. It's momentous. It's really enormous. If we really, really could start thinking of repentance as just the ongoing process of the heart's transformation, it would lose all of the negative pejorative. Right. Penance strewn kind of.
- [40:45]
Podcast Host or Announcer
Yeah.
- [40:45]
Terrell Givens
Feelings and tone. So. So that's, that's really important too. Robert Alter has done a new translation of the Bible. It's very highly acclaimed. Many, many people love it. One of the very first lines is very memorable there. Right. Set of the earth was. Was what now I can't remember. Empty and void. Or wait. Oh, and now he calls it welter and waste.
- [41:06]
Podcast Co-host or Guest
Oh wow.
- [41:06]
Terrell Givens
And the world was welter and waste.
- [41:08]
Aubrey Chavez
And is he the one that has multiple. That tells you like multiple ways that each word could be interpreted?
- [41:14]
Terrell Givens
So. No, no, he's just. He just does a straightforward translation but with a. With a commentary.
- [41:18]
Aubrey Chavez
And his is multiple volumes.
- [41:20]
Terrell Givens
Yeah, it's three volumes. Three volume translation. And then the Jewish Publication Society. Right. Has a. Right. It seems to me that there should be an inherent interest in reading. Well, how do the Jewish people read their Bible that we have appropriated? And you get a very different rendering in the very beginning where the Holy Ghost is hovering over the world. And so it's kind of evokes notion of a spirit in a kind of bird, like. Right. Brooding over the nest. Whereas other translations describe the spirit sweeping across the face of the earth. I have a, an app that I use I can. Really highly recommended. It's just called E sword. And so at a glance I can open this app up and I have the translations of Luther, the International Standard Version, the Jewish Publication Society, the Latin, the Literal Version, the NRSV and a couple of others. And so you can actually compare them all at once. And so I think that's. I mean I never studied scriptures without having this ready to hand so that I can, I can kind of triangulate all the possibilities.
- [42:29]
Aubrey Chavez
Oh, I love that. That's so useful. Thank you. Well, as we. Do you have any others as we wrap up? Maybe could you just Leave us with, you know, an argument for why we should spend a year together studying the Old Testament. You know what, what are your real top reasons?
- [42:46]
Terrell Givens
Yeah, okay, I'll give two reasons. Okay. One is Joseph Smith seemed to learn from his immersion in the Book of Mormon text that his one way of thinking about his calling, his mission was to bring together the Old and New Covenants. Right. So Christianity has been very quick and willing to relegate the Old Testament to relative insignificance because the general right, covenant theology throughout the Christian world has meant the Old Testament represents an Old Covenant which is replaced by Christ and the New Testament. Joseph Smith, to my knowledge, is the first Christian who comes along and goes, no, that can't be right. Because the covenant originates in the premortal worlds. And so both the Old and New Testaments are versions of that covenant. And so that gives us an incentive to read the Old Testament believing, as the Book of Mormon shows, that there's a way to reconcile the law of Moses and the, the grace of Christ, that there's a way to, to find a wholeness and a continuity in God's dealings and interactions with us. So that's one reason. And the second reason is because if you search the Old Testament, you will find the God of Enoch there. He's not on every page and you don't even find him frequently. But let me just give two of my favorite examples of this God. One is in Judges 10, and judges of course is notorious as one of the most right blood drenched accounts in the Scriptures. But there's this moment where once again Israel has disappointed God. Once again, he seems to be contemplating just writing them off. And the children of the Lord of Israel said unto the Lord, we have sinned. Do thou unto us. Whatsoever seemeth good unto thee, deliver us only we pray thee. And they put away the strange gods from among them and served the Lord. And the Lord's soul was grieved for the misery of Israel.
- [44:49]
Podcast Co-host or Guest
Wow, I did not remember that.
- [44:51]
Terrell Givens
That's pretty powerful. Yeah, right. It's like he sees them, he sees their contrition, he sees their genuine grief and he, he shares in their, in their sorrow. And then the other one is I, I just think there's, there's something absolutely incomparable about the relationship that develops between Moses and God. Anybody who thinks of God in trinitarian terms or in absolutes or philosophical abstractions seems to me hasn't really read the story of Moses encounters with God. And then verse 30 section chapter 33:15 of Exodus, the Lord has once again effectively said, I, I'm just. I'm done with you. And Moses said unto God, if thy presence, go not with me, carry us not up hence for wherein shall it be known here that I and thy people have found grace in thy sight? Is it not that thou goest with us? So shall we be separated, I and thy people from all the people that are upon the face of the earth. And the Lord said unto Moses, I will do this thing also that thou has spoken, for thou hast found grace in my sight, and I know thee by name. It doesn't take more than a few verses like that to tell me this is a. This is a record worth studying because God can be revealed in it. Wow.
- [46:16]
Aubrey Chavez
Thank you so much, Terrell.
- [46:18]
Podcast Co-host or Guest
Yeah, brilliant as always, Terrell. Well, really appreciate you.
- [46:20]
Terrell Givens
Thanks. Good to be here.
- [46:22]
Aubrey Chavez
All right, thanks so much for listening. We were really hope that you enjoyed this conversation with Terrell Gibbons. If Faith Matters content is resonating with you and you get the chance. We would love for you to rate and review the podcast wherever you listen. We read all of the reviews and it really helps us to get the word out about Faith Matters and we appreciate the support. Thanks again for listening.